As software developers, academics, and computer professionals, we are
writing to express our serious misgivings regarding the S.2048, the
Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA). The
copy-controls proposed in CBDTPA would effectively prevent the use of
digital computers and other digital devices for data processing and
other uses unrelated to proprietary content of the entertainment
industries. The controls would effectively reduce all computer and
information devices to television sets with modest interactive
features, reduce the reliability and utility of computing tools, and
require the computer and related industries and their users to incur
costs that would have significant negative economic impact.

Implementation of the CBDTPA would lead to decreased reliability and
security of computer systems and related digital media
devices. Implementation of the standards would require the
introduction of large amounts of new code into operating systems
leading to new opportunities for bugs and system reliability problems,
along with new targets for hackers. The result would be greater costs
and reduced benefits to all users.

The CBDTPA would also pose a threat to the development of open source
software, which has been a major force behind the development of key
Internet technologies. The distributed nature of open source
development would make implementation of the security standards
difficult, perhaps threatening the vitality of open source software.
This would reduce entrepreneurship, innovation, and
competition in the computer industry. The requirements of CBDTPA could
threaten the functioning of the Internet itself.

Intellectual property rights of content producers are clearly
important to the US economy. However, a substantial body of existing
law provides substantial protection for these rights. The CBDTPA would
extend these rights effectively allowing the entertainment industry to
determine how existing digital media devices and services would have
to be redesigned and which technologies could and could not be
developed in the US in the future. This would set a dangerous precedent.
Computer and other digital technologies are used for countless
purposes in addition to their use in relation to the proprietary
content of the entertainment industry. The CBDTPA would enshrine the
interests of the entertainment industries as more important than the
interests all of these other industries and computing and other
digital applications.

Given the importance of computing and other digital technologies to
our economic, military, government, and financial systems, it would be
most unwise to sacrifice the utility and reliability of these critical
systems in order to enhance intellectual property safeguards for the
entertainment industry. Different approaches to that goal must be
found, possibly including innovative adaptations by the entertainment
industry itself to fundamental changes that are occurring and will
continue to occur in digital and related technologies.

Sincerely,

Coralee Whitcomb
President
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility

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